Oilers Game Day: Digging into Oilers’ unusual “4-6-7” defence rotation

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Game Day 5: Edmonton at Nashville

After a dispiriting home stand, Edmonton Oilers take their show on the road tonight for the first time this 2024-25 NHL season. The Oil convincingly lost their first three games in regulation, and were on the verge of dropping the fourth against Philadelphia before their big guns delivered the late tying goal followed by the overtime winner to salvage two points from the four-game set. Which isn’t great, but still beats the heck out of the alternative that was staring them in the face at the last TV timeout on Tuesday.

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That late comeback, featuring some gritty team play to overcome 2-0 and 3-2 deficits, broke the goose egg in the W column and provided something to build on. The next step comes tonight in Nashville, where the Oil will meet the Predators at 6pm MDT.

One of the big questions facing Edmonton’s coaching staff remains the deployment of the defensive corps, and specifically who among the various six-figure candidates will step up to play alongside Darnell Nurse in the second pairing.

How it started

Let’s go back to the first day of training camp, when I wrote this post describing its most important battle, specifically, who would replace the traded Cody Ceci at 2RD. Not just Ceci, but two other options who played for stretches on Nurse’s right side during the long playoff run, namely Vincent Desharnais and Philip Broberg. Both departed over the summer as free agents. Yet a fourth playoff partner, Brett Kulak, remains in Edmonton, but is back on the left side in the third pairing after struggling on his off side.

Leading to this scenario, described in the linked article:

• What we know for sure is that the four returnees can be written in pen, with Mattias Ekholm, Darnell Nurse, and Brett Kulak continuing to lock down the left side and Evan Bouchard the top righty without a throw.

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So far, the coaching staff has stuck to that template, with Ekholm-Bouchard the undisputed first pairing, Nurse-Player X on the second, and Kulak-Player Y on the third. With one of the candidates mentioned in the original post, Joshua Brown, having been optioned to Bakersfield, the identities of X and Y have rotated among three other newcomers, Ty Emberson, Travis Dermott, and Troy Stecher,

Typically such rotations happen on the third pairing, with the d-men ranking 5-6-7 on the depth chart sliding in and out of the line-up. But in Edmonton, that rotation has become a somewhat unusual 4-6-7, with Kulak locked into the #5 role.

How it’s going

This table breaks down the ice time logged by each rearguard during the four games to date, listed in order of average ice time. The first pairing (orange background) has remained constant, while the second (yellow) and third pairs (green) along with the press box slot (grey) have changed on a nightly basis.

The numbers themselves tell us that coaches Kris Knoblauch and Paul Coffey have been increasingly reliant on a Big Three of Bouchard, Ekholm and Nurse, with all of them north of 20 minutes per game. Ceci used to be the fourth guy at that level, but in his absence the other alternatives have been logging in the 15-17 minute range, consistent with their past history in each case.

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Of those three candidates, it is Stecher’s star that is currently on the rise. After spending the first two games watching from above, he was inserted into the third pairing in Game 3 and then on the second in the most recent contest a.k.a. “the win”. His ice time was limited, in part due to the five minutes he spent in the penalty box after going to bat for netminder Stuart Skinner, but for most of the night he was Nurse’s partner, with decent results including a 1-0 goal share.

Emberson got the first crack at that spot but struggled mightily in a 20-minute debut, dropped to the third pairing, then the pressbox, then back to the third pair where he played just over 10 minutes on Tuesday. Dermott got promoted to that second pair in the third period of Game 1, stayed there for 2 games, but found himself in the press box for the most recent game. He will remain there tonight.

Digging a little deeper into deployment, it becomes clear that Ekholm-Bouchard are getting first-pairing minutes at even strength, while each has logged 4 minutes a night on special teams. Nurse has been deployed quite a bit less at evens, but he too has been a 4-minute-a-night contributor to special teams.

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The right-most columns clarify that Bouchard has gotten most of the odd-man minutes on the powerplay, while Ekholm and Nurse have done so on the PK, primarily as a duo. No real surprises there, outside of the split of those PK minutes. Against Philly, Ekholm played a whopping 8:30 and Nurse 7:10 of the 11:47 Edmonton was shorthanded.

Of the newcomers, Dermott (7 periods with Nurse) has gotten the most even-strength minutes but virtually nothing on either special team. Kulak, Emberson and Stecher are a notch lower, each in the 13-14 minute range at evens and 1.5-2 minutes on special teams, almost entirely the PK.

Early results are not promising, especially on that penalty kill unit. Ekholm and Nurse have been burned for 4 GA in about 13 minutes of action, while Kulak — who rarely played on that unit last season — has already been lit up for 4 GA in just 8 minutes. Emberson’s results of 2 GA in 4 minutes are similarly poor. Far too early with far too tiny a sample size to draw too many conclusions other than one obvious one: that unit needs to be a whole lot better.

So too does the entire group at even strength. Not surprising that the Ekholm-Bouchard pair which has primarily been deployed with the Connor McDavid line has produced excellent underlying numbers — 68% Corsi, 65% expected goals — but they’ve managed just a 40% goal share to this early point. Bouchard has been struggling mightily to get his shots through, credited with 7 shots on net compared to a startling 28 that have been blocked, by far the most in the NHL. But he did manage to slide into open ice to score Edmonton’s biggest goal of the early season on Tuesday. That late game-tying goal was effectively worth 1.5 standings points, 1 outright for forcing overtime with a 50% chance at securing the second.

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Nurse missed the first 6 preseason games, and only now has his workload begun to reach normal levels. As was the case in 2023-24, he’s playing barely 20% of his minutes with McDavid, but this time around he’s doing so without the security blanket of a regular partner of proven top-4 pedigree.

The fact remains that no matter who he lines up with, Nurse will be a member of a $10 million pairing, and clearly the onus is on the veteran to carry a heavy share of the load. He had his best performance of the young season in the win on Tuesday, and will get a second game with the same partner in Nashville tonight.

Tonight’s line-up

Not too surprising that Knoblauch will be going with the exact same lines and pairings as beat the Flyers. The first line remains stacked with Edmonton’s three best offensive forwards, while the middle six is pretty balanced to the point that some observers are suggesting that the Jeff Skinner – Adam Henrique – Connor Brown trio should be listed above tah tof Vasily Podkolzin – Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Viktor Arvidsson. All six players played in the range of 9-11 minutes at even strength last game.

The only change will be between the pipes, where Calvin Pickard gets his second start of the young season. He’ll be looking to bounce back from a tough game against Chicago in which he yielded 5 goals on just 20 shots.

As is always the case when these two teams meet, especially in the Music City, the focus will be on Leon Draisaitl who has hammered the Preds senseless for the last several years.

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Tonight’s opponent

The Predators are one of four playoff teams who currently lie at the bottom of the Western Conference standings along wtih Vancouver, Edmonton and Colorado. They are 0-3-0 with just 6 goals scored, 14 allowed.

No surprise to find veteran Filip Forsberg atop the scoring list with 3 points in 3 games, while veterans Ryan O’Reilly and UFA signing Jonathan Marchessault each have 2. Their other celebrated addition, 500-goal man Steven Stamkos, has yet to find the scoresheet.

Another player to watch is captain Roman Josi, an annual Norris Trophy candidate who really drives play from the back end though an uncharacteristic 0-1-1, -3 to this early point.

Star goaltender Juuse Saros is expected, though not confirmed, to get the start. Recently signed to a rich extension through 2033, he’s had a tough start to the current season, including a 7-3 beatdown by Seattle right in Nashville on Tuesday. No doubt he and the Preds will be determined, indeed desperate, to turn things around against the Oilers tonight.

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